A Data Visualization Newsletter

STAT — a publication focused on news in health, medicine, and the life sciences — has developed a tool to assess that risk that COVID-19 poses to rural communities. The tool takes into account five different factors, including the number of hospital beds in the surrounding area and the relative age of the population. Check out how prepared your county is to weather the storm.

The CDC continues to tout social distancing as one of the most effective things we can do to curtail the coronavirus’s spread. This simulation, created by researchers at Kyoto Institute of Technology, shows why. Respiratory droplets from somebody coughing or sneezing — a likely route of transmission for the coronavirus — can actually travel upwards of 20 feet indoors and settle on nearby surfaces. That’s one reason keeping your distance from others is key.

As coronavirus cases saw an uptick in Japan two weeks ago, officials urged its citizens to shelter in place. In Tokyo, that adjustment has been particularly difficult for many residents. Apartments in Japan’s largest city are notably cramped -- in some cases smaller than shelters constructed in refugee camps. Reuters talked to some residents dealing with the tough transition.

According to the infinite monkey theorem, “a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” No chance, right? Well, our friends at The Pudding are putting the theory to the test. They’re using computer simulations of a piano to play millions of notes every minute and see if it can randomly produce difficult songs, like Beethoven’s “Für Elise”.